Jomon Landscape Practice and Ecological Resilience in Prehistoric Japan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This presentation argues that the resilience of the food systems during and after the Jomon period (ca. 16,000–2500 cal BP) in prehistoric Japan must have been closely related to the diversity of staple foods, settlement locations, and methods of landscape management including the use of fire. Despite an abundance of shell-middens, the majority of Jomon settlements are located on top of hills, not in the lowlands. While recent molecular and isotopic investigations of pottery highlight the possible importance of marine food for the Incipient Jomon period, archaeobotanical analyses and stable isotopic analyses indicate that most residents of Early–Final Jomon (ca. 7000–2500 cal BP) sites are likely to have been heavily reliant on starchy foods from the forest, including chestnuts, acorns, and buckeyes. Contributions of ethnohistory and agroecology are critical to developing a model of long-term resilience in Jomon foodways against disasters and climate change in relation to multi-stability of ecosystems.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36073.0